


Draco Malfoy: The Boy Who Riffed

by andromedaic (ancientforever)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Humor, Rewrite
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 02:42:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4729778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancientforever/pseuds/andromedaic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Make friends with the Chosen One," they said. "It'll be fun," they said. Now Draco's stuck with a forgetful and near-sighted Harry Potter, narrating his every movement with the snark and poise expected of a Malfoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Hogwarts Express

The massive train was red and black—or maybe blue and gold, Harry couldn't figure out the difference. But it was massive, he was sure of that, unless there was something bigger in the wizarding world than this train, in which case it probably wasn't so massive... He squinted up at the windows, then back at his new friend with the really shiny reflective hair.

"So this is it?" he asked, trying to look nonchalant by leaning against his trunk (he still hadn't figured out his new friend's gender, despite being told their name at least a hundred times, and by gosh he was going to flirt with anything that moved, because at least it was better than Dudley).

"The Hogwarts Express," his androgynous friend said, their shiny face parted only by a shinier smile full of the shiniest teeth. "And my name's Draco," the boy added out of habit.

Draco, Draco, Draco. Harry repeated the name to himself under his breath—"Draco, Draco, Draco," he mumbled.

"Hm?" the other boy asked, shoving his reflective hair out of his face with an even more reflective hand. He still wasn't used to this Potter boy, who kept squinting at him from behind those big awkward glasses, but he was going to do as his father said and make powerful friends while he was at Hogwarts.  _Make powerful friends_ , Lucius had commanded before leaving him in favor of hitting up Madame Malkin's back in Diagon Alley. "What did you need?"

"Oh, er, nothing." Harry flushed and stood straight and, thinking that maybe he could save this social situation, he tugged his luggage towards the door before smashing his head into the metal frame.

Draco winced (on the inside;  _a Malfoy shows no pain_ , said his father's voice in his head) and said lamely, "It's closed, Harry." Count to three, he reminded himself.  _Count to three and the pain will stop_. Well, there wasn't any pain, but there was a definite itch in his fingers to pull out his wand and make sure the Potter boy couldn't hurt himself any more, preferably by way of a Full Body-Bind.

Harry stumbled back and tried to regain his composure, brushing his shirt straight. "I knew that. Tooootally knew that," he said with a laugh, trying to pass it off as intentional as possible. He glanced with fear up to the closed train door, wondering why he couldn't make it out very well, then decided that it must be blue—the train must have been gold and blue. He'd always had a little bit of trouble with blue.

"R-i-g-h-t." Draco always spelled out words in his head when he was stressed, and now he nearly slapped himself for that habit transfering to speech, but his father would've been proud, at least. Now if only he hadn't just insulted one of the most powerful wizards in the world— _make friends with the Chosen One, Draco,_  his father's voice echoed. _The Chosen One, the Chosen One, what's his name? Jerry Mopper?_

 _Harry Potter_ , his mother had corrected, filing her nails at the kitchen table with her favorite butterfly knife.

"The Chosen One, Harry Potter," he mumbled, staring at the boy in front of him with the strange lightning-bolt scar and unruly mop of hair. There could be no one else—there was only one Chosen One, and only one Harry Potter.

Actually, now that he thought about it, he was pretty sure he heard someone else calling a name that sounded distinctly similar...

"Neville Longbottom!" an old woman screeched in his ear as she roared past him and his new friend, headed straight for a dopey-looking boy that looked, indeed, very similar to Harry. Draco squinted for a minute before deciding that the names were too different for even  _his_ father to get wrong.

Who would mistake a Longbottom for someone powerful, anyway? He smirked and turned back to Harry, one hand resting on a popped hip. "So you'll be sitting with me, right?"

The Chosen One stopped picking at a strand of hair and straightened up. He squinted at his very reflective friend again and said, "Duh. You're the only person I know here, uh... Drano?"

"Draco," the boy corrected. "My name is Draco, Harry." He looked up at the train—very much red and black—and then back at the rest of the platform. It was nearly empty except for himself, the Longbottoms, and a pocket of Weasleys down near the end. He smirked wider at the sight of the Weasleys' half-dead owl perched on top of their mother's head, making a magnificent hat.

"D-D-D-Draco," an all-too-familiar voice stuttered behind him.

 _This guy_ , he thought, turning to face the turbaned professor with a sneer. What could he want? "Yes, Quirinus?" he drawled. "I don't know if you can see this, but I'm busy. With my friend. Harry Potter. The Chosen One."

Said Chosen One was busy squinting at the train doors again, wondering if he had to make them open with his mind, or if they were like normal train doors and just opened when it was time to board. He couldn't see a boarding schedule on the platform, not that he could see much of anything, so it was kind of hard to tell.

"B-b-b-busy, y-y-yes," Professor Quirrell stuttered. He adjusted his godawful purple turban and coughed into one hand, barely covering up a sneeze from the back of his head.

"Bless you," Harry said brightly as he turned back to the conversation. He paused and looked between his new friend and the tall man (well, average height, but he wasn't the tallest eleven-year-old to start with) and asked, "Uh, Dranko, who's this?"

Draco sighed and covered his face with his hand. There was no point in trying. He would be forever memorialized as Dranko of the Great and Noble House Baltoy if the Chosen One had his way. "Draco," he said anyway, irritably, "my name is Draco. And this is Quirinus Quirrell, the new... DADA teacher." He side-eyed the man.

Quirrell's turban shifted uncomfortably while he fiddled with a scroll in his hands. "Y-y-y-yes, Mr Potter, I will be teaching you and Young Sir Malfoy—"

"Dada?" Harry asked, his eyebrows furrowed in consternation. He couldn't make out most of the professor's face, but the turban was at least easy to see, considering how dark it was against the whiteness of his skin. "Like, sex ed? How to make babies? Da-da ma-ma?"

Quirrell sighed. "No. D-D-D-Defense A-A-Against the D-D-Dark A-Arts," he mumbled.

"D, D, D, Defense, A, A, Against—"

"Defense Against the Dark Arts, Harry." Draco pinched the bridge of his nose and looked around the platform to see if he could find anyone with an extra brain cell to rub against Potter's lonely wanderer. Crabbe might make a good match, or that Greg guy, what was his name? He was a Goyle, wasn't he? "It's a class. At Hogwarts. Where we're going."

Harry squinted his eyes narrower, but ended up seeing nothing but the inside of his eyelids. "Sorry, I can't hear him through the stutter."

"It's a learned skill," the Malfoy boy drawled. "Thank you for introducing yourself, Quirinus. Your services are no longer required." He waved a dismissive hand at the professor, who stuttered in protest.

 _What_ , exactly, he stuttered, Draco couldn't make out. He expected it had something to do with conflict-important information, but it certainly couldn't matter that much if he had to add a dozen extra consonants in front of every word. "Goodbye," he repeated—someone else had to be getting there soon. Someone smart. Like that Zabini kid, maybe.

"Draco! Dracooooooo!" The unnecessarily-drawn-out vowels came from some echoing corner of the platform, and he felt the blood drain out of his face. Not her. Not  _her_.

 _Play nice with the Parkinson girl, Draco_ , his father's voice echoed in his head.

 _She likes you,_ his mother's voice added _. Let her down easy, maybe set her up with that nice Nott boy._

Theodore deserved so, so much better than this fate.

"Hello, Pansy," he said in a tired voice. Just because he played with the girl as a child didn't mean that he had to hook up with her at age eleven. For Merlin's sake, he'd rather date  _Potter._

"Dracoooo," Pansy cooed, her hair done up in pigtails that her parents probably thought were cute—they were kinda cute, he admitted, but when someone acted like Pansy, it was hard to look at their face past their annoyingly-extended words.

A brilliant idea struck him.

Looking at his reflective friend's even paler face, Harry felt a sudden sense of dread knot up in his gut. He couldn't make out Draco's eyes, let alone his eyebrows, but he could definitely see that wicked, smirky grin. He side-eyed the slightly-more-visible girl who had just bounced up to them, and squinted at her. She was kinda cute, he guessed.

Draco looked between the two, his evil plan formulating in the back of his head. A way to get Parkinson off his back and Potter indebted to him at the same time... "Pansy," he said with a pleasant enough smile, "have you met my new friend, Harry?"


	2. Rice Martini

The compartment in the Hogwarts Express was fairly full, with five people in there, but Draco claimed three seats for himself and propped his feet up on the upholstery. His father would have pitched the largest fit east of the Atlantic Ocean if he'd seen.

Harry looked between the other four, ranging from very reflective (Draco) to not as reflective (Pansy), and two somewhere in-between (Crabbe and Goyle, whose faces were blob-like enough already that his poor vision didn't have much of an effect on them). "So, we're all friends?" he asked, obviously uncomfortable under the arm Pansy had around his shoulders.

Draco smirked and flipped a galleon in his hands. "If we all get Slytherin. I know I will, of course." Something about being in front of Crabbe and Goyle made him feel the need to show off, like they were challenging the very fact that he was classy. "My family's been in Slytherin since the very beginning."

Harry's mouth hung open a little, and a dust mote landed straight on his tongue. He made a face and scraped at it, then looked to the other three. "Pansy? Vincent? Greg? What about you guys?"

Pansy gave a sly little smile, and Draco's stomach dropped. She was happy with Potter, but she would only be entertained for so long—he knew how easily she got bored. "Of coooourse I'll be sorted into Slytherin," she chirped. "What other house  _is_ there?"

_Oh, Pansy. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?_  Draco propped himself up on his elbows and stared at the wall behind her head. _Because I hate you just a little bit more,_ he thought sourly. "Crabbe and Goyle will get Slytherin, too," he said without sparing more than a thought for them.

"Oh, uh. Cool." Harry ducked his head and stared at his hands, which reflected back up at him. He didn't have the heart to tell his new friends that he could barely tell them apart. Pansy was the female one and Drankero was the smirky one—was that his name? It was so hard to remember. Stupid wizards and their stupid Latin names.

"You'll get Slytherin as well." Draco waved a hand just as the compartment door opened, and a familiar face walked in (thankfully, it was attached to a body with legs to do the walking).

"Zabini!" Pansy shot up from her seat, the bottom of the compartment rocking under her feet, and grinned at the newcomer. "Surprise seeing you here, Ladykiller," she smirked.

Blaise Zabini was done with the world, and especially done with people who called him Ladykiller (Pansy Parkinson was the only one who called him that). He rolled his eyes at Pansy, pulled his trunk into the compartment, and took the one seat that Draco left empty next to him. "Hello."

"Z-a-b-i-n-i," Draco drew out, running his tongue over his teeth. If he said the wrong thing to Blaise Zabini, Ms Zabini would be writing very angry letters to his family. Very angry letters that were probably full of poison and other generally nasty things.

"You don't need to say my name like that, Draco," Blaise said in his usual deadpan tone. He lifted his nose in the air and looked down it at the one person in the compartment that he didn't recognize—the boy with black hair and blue eyes. "This is?"

"Harry Potter," Harry rushed to introduce himself. "The Chosen One. No big deal, you know, I mean... I have my mother's eyes," he said defensively, staring at his hands. This Zucchini guy was the only one that had definite features, probably because he wasn't white enough to be reflective—a good thing, too. He had been starting to wonder whether Slytherin was some sort of übermensch cult left over from World War II.

"I care so much." Blaise glanced over at Draco, who nodded for him to go ahead and introduce himself. "Blaise Zabini."

"Oh, you're the one whose mother you-don't-want-people-talking-about-that-do-you?" Like most people, Harry lost his nerve under a Zabini glare.

Draco couldn't say he'd ever seen the issue. He sat up, stretching his legs out to the other seat instead and resting his heels on Crabbe's knee. "Harry's going to be joining us in Slytherin this year," he said to Zabini. He didn't mention that the other boy couldn't see when a train door was closed, and appeared to be the most oblivious person to ever attend Hogwarts. That was something best left for a later date. Preferably next to a large vat of Polyjuice Potion and whatever Potter needed to complete his quests.

"Amazing." Zabini left his trunk in the doorway of the compartment, blocking almost everyone from entering, except for one skinny and limber Theodore Nott, who slipped through. "I'm so awestruck."

"Wait, really?" Nott's mouth gaped open, and Draco was tempted to tell him to close it before the same thing happened to him as Potter. "What's happening? Is Blaise going mad?"

_He will be after a day of dealing with Harry_ . Draco shook the thoughts off and shifted to the side, staring out the window as the countryside slipped them by. They couldn't be at Hogwarts soon enough. "Harry, meet Nott. Nott, Potter."

"Actually," Harry interjected, "I'm Potter, so I wouldn't expect Knot to be Potter—"

"His name," Draco sighed, "is Theodore Nott. That's N-O-T-T Nott, not K-N-O-T knot."

If anything, Harry looked even more confused. "His name is Not, but it's nott Knot, it's... I don't get it." Draco had a bad feeling that he had been unintentionally volunteered to become the Chosen One's lackey who did most of the work. Thankfully, he had his own lackeys to do that for him.

"You can just call me Theo," Nott piped up as he stole the seat that Zabini had been taking. He shrugged and grinned across the compartment at Disposable Lackeys One and Two—Crabbe and the Goyle boy—and Draco rolled his eyes. He was lucky indeed.

Zabini grumbled something under his breath, and Draco made a little more room between himself and Nott for the other boy to sit down. The compartment was getting a little more crowded with seven of them in there; perhaps if it got to be too much, he could send Pansy to get them something from the trolley down the way.

_One of everything, please._  He smirked at nothing and glanced around at the other faces, his gaze landing on Harry's yet again.

Harry, for one, didn't understand why Draco kept giving him that weird look. He couldn't quite make it out, but it was somewhere between the Dursleys' outright disgust and Mrs Figg's pity and stale cake, and he definitely didn't like it.

He distracted himself by smiling at the guy across from him—what was his name, Blyce Bikini? Harry wasn't sure he'd heard that right, but it would just be too awkward to ask for a re-introduction, so he rolled with it and stuck his hand out. "Potter, Harry. The Chosen One."

"So you told me." The Bikini guy shook his hand, then wiped it off on the knee of his robes. Speaking of robes, he looked like he was some kind of otherworldly occultist.

Then again, Harry guessed, they were all some kind of otherworldly occultist. After all, they were headed to Pigfarts—no,  _Hogwarts_ , that was the school's name—School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, so he guessed he really was a wizard after all, and not a blizzard like that old guy had said.

"Soooo," Pansy squeed brightly, squeezing his shoulder as she did. "How were your summers? Mine was  _fantastic_ !"

The Knott-Not boy by the window piped up again, "Mine was great. Spent a lot of time in the southeast, you know. London, that is. Dad was lookin' at gettin' me something nice for my birthday, don't know if he did or not, guess I won't until my birthday."

Across the compartment from Harry, obviously trying to hide in the shadows of the luggage rack, Draco covered the lower half of his face and tried not to grimace. _A Malfoy does not show pain. A Malfoy does not show pain. A Malfoy_ —should not have to put up with the degree of idiocy he was surrounded by on a daily basis.

Zabini shrugged and stood. "Mine was passable. If you don't mind, I think I'll take a walk," he said with his usual blank resting face.

Draco stood as well, making as big a show out of it as he could. "I think I'll join you, Zabini. I need to find a place to change," he said, reaching up to pop the latch on his trunk.

He was not going to be left in the compartment without the only sane man around him.


End file.
